BARCELONA, Spain – Monster Energy Yamaha MotoGP’s Maverick Viñales topped the timesheets during Monday’s MotoGP open test at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Viñales and his teammate, Valentino Rossi, spent much of the day evaluating new electronics and a new exhaust, both aimed at making the acceleration on their Yamaha bikes smoother, as well as some new prototype Michelin tires.
Viñales led the way during the test thanks to his best time of 1:38.967, making him the only rider to lap in less than 1:39. He finished .047 of a second ahead of Petronas Yamaha SRT rider Franco Morbidelli.
“I’m quite satisfied about the test, not because of the lap time, but because of the way we handled this test, because it was important to try many things,” Viñales said. “The whole team put in hard work and we changed many parts of the bike. To end at the top is important for us, also for the mechanics, who worked very hard today. But the most important thing is that my feeling on the bike was really good and let’s see if we can keep this momentum, which we had here in Barcelona, going at the next race in Assen.
“We changed the settings on the bike quite a lot because we think we found one area here that helped us for the race, and it seemed to work, so we will continue to work in that direction and get more confidence on the bike. The feedback on the new Michelin tires is good. The grip from the tires is good, so I was able to do really good laps, and I hope they will bring these tires in the future, because for our bike that will help a lot. But for now we are in 2019 and we keep improving race by race.”
Sunday’s race winner Marc Marquez ended the day third fastest for Repsol Honda, followed closely by Suzuki’s Alex Rins and the second Petronas Yamaha SRT entry of Fabio Quartararo.